Thursday, February 09, 2006

French farmer Jose Bove, a prominent protester against genetically modified food and agricultural free trade, has been denied entry into the United States, officials of an event he was due to address said on Thursday.

I love genetically modified organisms and I have zero respect for Mr Bove', but I do believe in free debate. I never liked Bove' suspecting him of pretending to care about consumers' interests and the environment while actually caring about the interests of people like Jose' Bove', technophobia and anti-americanism.

I confess that I was pleased when, in my view, he revealed his true colors (the color of Euros) by arguing that people should not get too upset about mad cow disease or we would be left with a small number of huge super carefully inspected farms. That is, if the interests of small farmers conflict with the interest of consumers who do not wish to risk a slow horrible death, well the consumers will have to take their chances.

The issue today, however, is that he was denied entry to the USA. This is an offence against free debate unworthy of the country of the first amendment. Also they sent him back to De Gaulle airport after about 16 hours in an airplane, which I consider to becruel and unusual punishment.